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AI-RFI-response-Archinal_USGS.pdf

We comment here on all of the areas of the Asteroid Initiative Request for
Information. In particular it appears that some type of precursor mission to a single asteroid or
multiple asteroids will be required in order to properly characterize the target asteroid(s). Such
a step will be necessary in order to sufficiently reduce the risk to any ARM, demonstration
deflection mission, or human mission to an asteroid and greatly increase the science return and
exploration and resource development potential of any such bodies. It is also necessary to do
substantial and early instrument development, development of standards and methods for
instrument calibration, and development of various standards, algorithms, software, and
procedures, in order to accurately (with known levels of accuracy) and robustly determine
fundamental parameters of any target asteroid, such as size, shape, density, and internal
structure. Most of these issues have already been discussed in Archinal et al. (2012) – an
extended abstract for the International Workshop on Instrumentation for Planetary Missions,
Archinal et al. (2013) – an extended abstract for the Planetary Defense Conference, and Nefian
et al. (2013) – a NASA TM publication and white paper from NASA Ames Research Center about
the needs for small body mapping.